I love the phrasing, it highlights what I view is the essential aspect of this primary; there are still real, genuine, liberal progressives out there, and a lot of them. The Democratic Machine has completely forgotten about them (and would rather they all just shut up and died, it seems), but Bernie proves that we’re still out there, and we can be mobilized. He proves that the Democratic Party has failed. Further, he proves that the “establishment” has failed.

Oddly, Trump proves the same points on the right. This primary is pretty much Americans saying that their sick to death of voting for the same “establishment” candidates that have put us into this mess. Obviously “this mess” means very different things to Bernie supporters and Trump people, as do the solutions, but their support springs from the same font of satisfaction with the powers-that-be within their respective parties.

After the first Obama term, I would have unregistered as a Democrat, if I was allowed to vote in primaries. When asked, I no longer tell people I’m a Democrat, as I view it as a tainted term. I’m a liberal. I’m a progressive. I’m not a Democrat.

Honestly? I think he might pull it off; people keep applying older stats to future voting pools, when those same statistical models predicted voter rejection in the past.
Rejection that did not occur for Sanders, who is in fact beating all predicted odds.

That’s all well and good, and Nate Silver is, in my opinion, doing the best statistical work out there with the available data. HOWEVER, as we saw in the Michigan primaries, there’s a big gap in the data available to analysts like Silver, who wrongly predicted a 98% probability for a Clinton win there.

I don’t think anyone knows exactly why this season’s polling has been so skewed toward Sec. Clinton, but the results seem to indicate it. Sen. Sanders has outperformed polling estimates in multiple primaries this season.

I have theories (well, conjecture mainly) about why the polls have been wrong so often: (a) under-representation of young voters, some or many of whom do not have a land-line phone. (b) missing data on people (like me) who don’t answer their land lines when unknown numbers call.

Therefore, the polling data isn’t about “likely voters”, but about “likely voters who either don’t have a landline or caller ID; or are bored enough to answer phone polls.”

I don’t think I’m comfortable with Bernie “running till the moneys gone”. My social media feeds have been incessantly clogged with posts and articles about how Bernie is TOTES WINNING YOU GUYS, despite his being in an actual losing position by most measures (at best he’s not winning yet). And his fundraising has been, and remains strong. So based on that fund raising, and that weirdly fervent strain of denial in his base, “running till the money’s gone” has him pulling a 3rd party run, write in campaign or some other nonsense. Which would be bad. Split vote, Trump and all that.

What he needs to do is run, hard, till the convention. Then take his purse and all that enthusiasm to down ballot races, house, senate, even state level races. That’s where change could legitimately be effected by shifting otherwise deadlocked ratios and embedded GOP control. A lot of the stuff he’d like to do as POTUS would be completely stymied by that very situation. And in terms of voter suppression, gerrymandered districts and the like if his “revolution” did show up it wouldn’t have the impact he thinks under the current state of things. There might be a rare opportunity to shift some of those offices before it would otherwise be possible. Making progress on dismantling that un-democratic crap easier, and there by meaning more could be accomplished in terms of a progressive/liberal agenda.

I worry more that we’ll see those actions by the GOP. Why would Mitt Romney have been dusted off? Do they try to grab Massachusetts and Ohio in the general and let the Speaker of the Tea Party pick a President? Stealing elections is in the recent playbook.

You seem to forget that Nate Silver made his bones by showing that today’s equivalent of the “Dewey Wins” polls were wrong. So your picture actually supports Silver’s numbers. To quote Rick Perry, “Oops.”

Sanders can’t win the Primary, since he has to share his delegates with the Undeserving Poor on account of all that Socialism.(*1)

Hillary can’t win the election, for the same reason.

Only Trump can win, because he can keep all the delegates for himself. Also, something about Trickle Down and the Invisible Hand of the Market. Plus he’s got brownshirts, to maintain Law and Order.(*2)

See the problem there as been that Clinton has also outperformed her polling in a lot of cases. As have a lot of people over in the GOP race. Where Bernie has outperformed polling (especially more recently) its been in states with few polls before the race, or polls known to be of low quality. And generally been in the realm of races being closer than expected rather than of higher margins than expected, so there’s been less effect on actual delegate ratio as a result. As far as I’m aware the last rounds were roughly in line with expectations, though of higher margins than expected (a good sign for Bernie, he finally shifted the delegate ratio). Primary polling is known to be frequently inaccurate, mercurial, and early on not very predictive. The actual results of voting, especially when broken out by demographics is a lot better and more predictive. And that’s held up really well so far this year.

Michigan wasn’t an upset for Bernie in that it actually changed much for him in terms of raw numbers. It was an upset because it was so at odds with the info the media had. Silver wasn’t the only one who missed that prediction, nearly every other analyst and poll did. Because it broke with both heavy and normally reliable polls, and demographic information that was a very good predictor both preceding and after Michigan. Remember he experienced some serious loses immediately after Michigan. It was an upset/surprise for the Media, but it just kept Bernie in a similar place to where he was.

There’s been a lot of states with bad polling and bad polling over all. In loose terms there’s been a light bias towards Clinton, those tighter margins I mentioned earlier. But for the most part the problem polls have been wildly erratic across the board. I’m not seeing much of a consistent pattern in the issue when you take it all as a whole. The demographic data and analysis of actual voting hasn’t had that problem though. Michigan was, and is its only major failing. And since the patterns identified reasserted themselves immediately after and have held since Michigan is likely to be a quirk.

jlw:

I worry more that we’ll see those actions by the GOP.

Whatever happen on the GOP side its going to be ugly. They’re not making it out of this is stable shape, and that’s that big opportunity to shift the math I was talking about. The debate now seems to be whether it would be worse to back Trump as the nominee or to find some way to back some one else. There are deadlines in terms of getting on the general election ballot we’re all pushing up against. The window on 3rd party runs in most states are closing. While there are still plenty of ways to act as a spoiler they seem a lot more likely from the GOP. I’m not too worried about that. They’re going to collapse/realign one way or the other I think. Somehow engineering a split vote might be the least ugly way to go about it. What concerns me is the talk from Trump supporters. He’s CASUALLY mentioned riots if he doesn’t get the nod (thats definitely not a threat, of course not). His base is already violent. There’s some movement towards going armed to the GOP convention (the petition was apparently put up as satire by a liberal activist by Trumpies backed it, and the discussion was already there). And I’ve seen some shit about die hard Trump fans forming armed militias to “fix things” or start “the revolution” if Trump is pushed out. The other day at work a bunch of customers sat around talking about how they were “prepared to defend themselves” “they” should all be shot (meaning “shit eating liberals”). Swapping paranoid fantasies about how Hillary and the GOP were going to assassinate Trump to keep him from saving America from invading immigrant rapists in ISIS bomb vests. And sadly I’m not exaggerating, this is nothing I’ve ever heard openly discussed in all my years in this area. And its got a fair lot of far right wing nuts.

On the left I’m more concerned about something Silver only hints at. Even if Bernie manages to get his 988 delegates that doesn’t get him much of a lead. And there are possibilities for a break between popular vote, number of states, and total delegate count. Which is where your super delegates come in. They historically break for the leader, and ethically they’re kind of supposed to. And in large part they exist as a sort of tie breaker. Or to prevent a candidate like Trump (low numbers of party support, bad national numbers, actually a supervillan) from gaining the nomination. But in the absence of a clear “win” for one candidate or the other. Say they break with delegate count to support a candidate with a popular vote lead. Or its actually a tie and the decision sits entirely with them. They likely break for Hillary, given stated support at the moment.

I don’t know how Bernie’s supporters deal with that. There’s already a fair bit coming from the left that looks a lot like what ate up the GOP, and is particularly rampant in Trump’s camp. The purity test politics, conspiracy theory, denial of reality, and a hell of a lot of vitriol directed at their own allies. Bernie hasn’t engaged in it directly, but for a long while there he was definitely poking it with a stick. He seems to be actively trying to tamp it down now, though. That was concerning for me to begin with, because its a bad way to build a movement and sustain political success for the left. And if Hillary wins in a clear way I think it goes away. But lately I’ve been noticing the right wing nuts in Trump’s camp feeding off that. They’re obviously blaming a lot of their own violence and idiocy on Bernie supporters. They’re aping the talk of revolution, among other things.

I think if we end up with some sort of Trump situation, and some sort of Bernie situation that’s you’re real opportunity for something heinous. Angry armed supporters of an out and out authoritarian with a nice big domestic target they can get into a feed back loop with.

Yes. If we have someone other than Trump, there’s a good chance we can make it to the 2020 general election.

And there’s a chance the children can rise from the post-apocalyptic hellscape of the upcoming Cleveland RNC, and tell their democratic parents that its time they shut the fuck up and do things the right way… for once.